What stands out from Mombauer’s discussion is just how policy-relevant is the discussion on the origins the First World War. The debate on who started the war was, indeed still is, of critical importance if one wants to understand the future course of European history. In particular, there is the question of Germany – a key focus of Mombauer’s study. If Germany wanted to evade the Versailles settlement after 1918, she needed to avoid the charge of having planned an aggressive war in 1914. After 1945, if she wanted to avoid the charge of continuity in German history stretching from the Kaiser to Hitler, drawing a distinction between the accidental war in 1914 and the war planned by Hitler in 1939 was even more crucial. In the context of this argument on German foreign policy, the writing of German history moved centre-stage and Mombauer sets out to show how Clio was deceived in the years after 1918 and, for while, after 1945.

Where is the debate headed? All too often historians have attempted to predict the future of this century-long controversy—and they have nearly always got it wrong, thus making it presumptuous to make confident predictions. Footnote 126 In a summary of the debate as it had developed up to the end of 2012, Gerhard Groß was confident that the topic would continue to exercise public opinion in the run-up to the centenary and provide for “an exciting discussion,” but he did not expect “a new Fischer-controversy with a great deal of public attention like the one in the 1960s.” As we have seen, that turned out to be far from the mark. Footnote 127 During the—often heated—public controversy sparked by a number of these publications, fascinating national differences in interpreting the outbreak of the war emerged, a result of differing experiences of World War I, which shaped both a country's subsequent history and its national memory of the war. Historians and the public argued about questions of “war guilt,” and even about whether one should think about the origins of the war in such terms at all: today, responsibility is a term with which most historians would feel more comfortable. In addition, there was a notable effort to internationalize our reading of the origins of the war, with a move away from explanations that foreground the actions of a single government in favor of ones that seek instead to explain the diplomatic crisis of 1914 as an international event. As part of this, Serbia and the Entente powers found themselves under scrutiny to an extent not seen since the immediate postwar years, whereas Germany in particular benefited from a propensity among some historians to deemphasize its role in the escalation of the July Crisis. Today, all the most recent contributions to the debate attempt to explain the July Crisis by considering the actions of the governments of all the great (and some of the smaller) powers; explanations that focus on the actions of one government above that of all others have consequently fallen out of favor. In May 2019, she organised (with colleagues in the History Department) a Royal Historical Society Symposium entitled Contested Commemorations: Reflections on the centenary of the First World War, 2013-2019 , jointly funded by the Royal Historical Society and the Open University. https://royalhistsoc.org/rhs-symposium-ou-2019/ In: Epkenhans, Michael; Foerster, Stig and Hagemann, Karen eds. Militaerische Erinnerungskultur. Soldaten im Spiegel von Biographien, Memoiren und Selbstzeugnissen (pp. 132-151)The Battle of the Marne. Myths and Reality of Germany’s “fateful battle”’, The Historian, vol.68, No 4, Winter 2006, pp.747-769 The Fischer Controversy after 50 Years’, special issue of The Journal of Contemporary History, April 2013, 48 (2)

Clearly, then, some important areas of consensus do exist. But disagreements on nuance and detail continue unabated, and here the devil is in the detail. Historians reading the same evidence come to opposing conclusions or evaluate the importance of specific events in an entirely different way. For example, they continue to argue over the significance of Austria-Hungary's declaration of war on Serbia, the importance of the Russian mobilization, as well as about the nature of, and intention behind, the British mediation proposals. In fact, the most recent publications spend a great deal of time considering these controversial aspects in particular. Sir Edward Grey, Germany, and the Outbreak of the First World War: A Re-Evaluation', International History Review, April 2016, 38, No.2, 301-325

But at this point a crisis develops that is really not of Germany’s making and is really – in the beginning – Austria’s crisis. And Germany then encourages Austria. Would you say that that’s fair – do we need to look more at Austria in the July crisis than at Germany? Annika Mombauer (born 1967) is a historian best known for her work on General Helmuth von Moltke the Younger. She is a Senior Lecturer in Modern European History in the History Department at the Open University in Great Britain, and Associate Dean (Research) for the Arts Faculty. As it turned out, the same was true in 2014, when the German general public was again interested in this old-fashioned topic and in old-fashioned diplomatic history. By telling this intricate and complicated story so well, and by saying what many wanted to hear, Clark became (even more) famous and was able to sell his serious work of scholarship in truly staggering numbers. Footnote 125 We’ve just heard from John Röhl and now I’m in the studio here in London with Professor Christopher Clark from Cambridge who is equally as fascinated by this long debate on the origins of the First World War, but he takes rather a different angle in approaching the topic. Chris, before we talk about your own interpretation, I just wonder how convincing you find John’s view which I guess I’d summarise as the German paradigm. The Origins of the First World War: diplomatic and military documents, Manchester University Press, 2013 Find out more about this book

The Kaiser. New Research on Wilhelm II’s role in Imperial Germany, Cambridge University Press, 2003 (edited with Wilhelm Deist) Find out more about this book Until recently, most historians would have agreed that, in 1914, Britain had no foreign policy aims and ambitions on the continent, other than to preserve the balance of power, ensure the safety of the Empire, and remain on good terms with its Entente partners. Footnote 26 However, in his study of British foreign policy before the war, Andreas Rose casts doubt on Britain's alleged peaceful inclination and concludes that the German threat was largely an invention that suited Britain's decision-makers in their pursuit of a pro-Russian agenda. Footnote 27 While Germany was, “without question,” observed with mistrust from London, Rose argues that it was “in the main the fear of the seemingly unassailable Tsarist Empire that made Great Britain shy away from a neutral and conciliatory attitude in 1914.” Footnote 28 After the war, people dealt with what had happened in different ways. We’ll study how writers and artists attempted to come to terms with the experience. And finally, we’ll explore From Imperial Army to Bundeswehr: continuity and change in the role of the military in German history’, Review Article, The Historical Journal, 47, 1 (2004), pp.1-7 This book is a unique collection of diplomatic and military documents which illuminate the origins of the First World War. It brings together newly-discovered archival sources as well as documents not previously available in English, drawn from a broad range of sources and countries. It is an essential collection for anyone studying the origins of the First World War.Ever since the First World War started, historians have debated why it began; we’re now looking at a hundred year debate; we’re looking at mountains of documents; thousands of books written on the topic; and yet even now historians don’t agree on why war started in 1914. John has worked at the University of Sussex for all his academic life – and why are you so interested in the topic? In 2011 she organised, together with Professor John Röhl, an international conference to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Fritz Fischer’s publication Griff nach der Weltmacht, which sparked the infamous Fischer controversy. The conference took place on 13-15 October 2011 at the German Historical Institute in London. She has edited some of the conference proceedings which were published in a special issue of The Journal of Contemporary History, entitled ‘The Fischer Controversy after 50 Years’ (April 2013; 48, 2).

If there was a consensus of sorts, then Christopher Clark's groundbreaking study The Sleepwalkers both reacted to and shattered it. Impressive in its scope and in its scholarly grasp of a vast quantity of sources in many languages, Clark's book offered an alternative interpretation that has had an extensive and unexpected impact within and beyond the academy. He divided historians with his revision of the established consensus and inspired a large public audience with his provocative thesis, which offered a new way to think of Germany's role during the prewar years in particular. Yet, Krumeich rejects the idea that ambitions of world power or imperial predominance were behind German decision-making, instead identifying “a distinctive fear of the future” as the motivating force for the behavior of the authorities in Berlin. Footnote 74 Julikrise und Kriegsschuldfrage – Thesen und Stand der Forschung', Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, Spring 2014 I think it is wrong to talk about some sort of unique German war guilt, but we have to talk about different and very often interrelated responsibilities. The talk on German war guilt, which was very much influenced by the Versailles Treaty and the interwar period and the argument that Hitler's rise was only possible because of this war guilt.... Even a hundred years ago the Versailles verdict was not without its critics, of course, particularly in Weimar Germany, whose leaders and citizens saw themselves unfairly punished for a war they thought had been defensive in nature. There were also critical voices outside of Germany that assigned responsibility not to Berlin, but rather to Paris and St. Petersburg. But in the main, such revisionists were drowned out by those who blamed Germany until a more conciliatory consensus, reached by the 1930s, blamed impersonal forces, rather than German decision-makers, for the outbreak of the war. Footnote 10 This was an acceptable position for most. Soon an even more terrible war shifted the focus away from 1914, and in the aftermath of World War II, explaining the inhuman horrors of an even more deadly conflict overshadowed the once so bitterly debated question of the origins of World War I. Footnote 11RFE/RL: There has been a lot of speculation that the situation around the world now -- say, in Ukraine or the dispute between China and Japan over islands and resources in the South China Sea -- and the situation in the summer of 1914. Do you see parallels and lessons that can be applied to the world today?